What I’d Say to the President if he Came to our Vacation Bible School

 

Sermon by Rev. Steven McClelland on Matthew 18: 1 – 10.  Focus on what I would have said to President Trump following the events in Charlottesville, Virginia at our Vacation Bible School.

“It took the President two days to condemn and one day to retract his statement regarding where he stands on the KKK, Neo-Nazi’s and White Supremacists. There is nothing hard or even courageous about calling these groups out. Yet we have a President who conflates their hatred, violence and rhetoric with the people opposing them. Yes Mr. President, during the 2^nd world war Americans killed a lot of people, so did the Nazi’s. But guess what, we were still the good guys. Mr. President, there is no moral equivalency here.

On one side, a white supremacist by the name of James Fields killed a peaceful protester by the name of Heather Heyer, and wounded at least 19 others. The left did not drive a car into a group of white racists. So Mr. President there are not two sides. There is one side that is evil. And it’s been proven in many Hollywood films. – the Nazi’s are not the good guys!

Instead Mr. President, we have a situation that any child can see is scary and hate-filled. And we can see Mr. President that your vision of an alt. white nation is not what the kingdom of God looks like. At Bible School this week, Mr. President we had boys and girls, young men and women, old men and women of all backgrounds gather together here in our church for a week of celebrating our love of God and one another. We preach a message of love, the kind of love that Jesus showed to all people. And we preach a message of repentance as a way of getting right with God and neighbor when we have hurt someone with our actions or our words.

Our children, who are brown, white, and black, come from all over the world to live in a great country dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal in the eyes of God. And why this is important Mr. President is because we call ourselves Christ followers. Mr. President. I understand you call yourself a Presbyterian, but if you said the things you said and you were a member of my V.B.S., I would have to put you in time out and probably would have had to ask you to leave until you could control yourself better. Because I have a duty to protect my children and community from harm. I think you are a harmful person. I would try and talk to you about needing to apologize and repent and go in a different direction, because Jesus teaches all of us that we are sinners who need to change. But the way we change is not by doubling down on horrible words and actions. We apologize by saying, “I was wrong. And I’m terribly sorry for causing so much pain for so many people.”

Lady Gaga twitted this week: “I pray a true leader will rise to expel hatred from America. This is not US!” Unfortunately it is part of US! It’s a part of country’s history that we cannot ignore or pretend has gone away. Clearly it has not. So Mr. President, I offer you this analogy from Jim Jeffries – a very funny comic.

If a doctor came and told me that I had cancer in my right kidney, I wouldn’t say “I don’t have cancer. My right kidney has cancer. No I’d say, “I have kidney cancer in my body and if I don’t treat this it won’t just hurt my right kidney, it will kill my whole body.” And Mr. President, I wouldn’t go on to blame the left kidney and say the problem is on both sides.  No what I do is have the doctor cut that cancer out as quickly and aggressively as possible and hope it doesn’t come back.

But Mr. President I have never seen or heard you apologize for anything. I have heard you blame everyone else. That Mr. President is not what Christ followers do. So Mr. President if you were to continue in your ways I would have to keep you isolated from my people. I would protect my people from you because that is what a good shepherd does for his or her flock.

And if you were truly sorry for what you have said and done for years, if you truly wanted me to believe that you believed in Jesus much less followed Jesus, you would repent and apologize.

May God bless your soul because you are in great danger of losing it!

Pastor Steve